David Kennedy's Rankings

Before jumping in to an explanation of Prof. Kennedy’s remarks, I think it is prudent to note several items. First, Kennedy went through the matrix vertically, looking at groups and then each risk. As a class, we worked through the matrix horizontally, focusing on the threats and how they relate to different human groups. Although one should ideally consider each box as though it were isolated and independent, it seems that Kennedy had a different context than the class for assessing threats.

One of the more interesting, and certainly unscientific, areas of Kennedy’s assessment was in his use of averages. When looking at the threat of warfare to an individual, Kennedy remarked that a person in the U.S. would be ranked at a 7 while a person in a place such as Chad would be assessed a 2. To issue a ranking, Kennedy averaged these two numbers (sort of) to 5 for the entire category. I am surprised that the same method was not repeated for all other categories. For example, one might say the risk of warfare to Canada is low while it is high to Israel.

The threat of states at risk was almost entirely discounted by Kennedy, who regarded the collapse or pending collapse of a nation as a threat of isolated impact that rarely occurs. This view negates a far reaching effects of a failed or failing state. After North Korea’s recent foray back into the arena of testing nuclear weapons, it has been hypothesized that the nation is indeed on verge of crumbling. On that assumption, a failing state with nuclear weapons is a serious threat to all levels of analysis on this matrix. Such a state could undoubtedly threaten the use of its nuclear arsenal in hopes of securing aid from the international community. At the same time, I think that it is difficult to underestimate how much damage a failed state with no nuclear capabilities would cause. The former Yugoslavia and now the Sudan are prime examples of this. Violence spills over borders and international forces get involved in these circumstances. Failed states cannot control their illicit exports, such as drugs or human trafficking, which certainly has an impact on people and organizations around the globe.

Infowar was not a concern to Kennedy, who balked at the suggestion of media causing a threat to any of the levels of analysis besides the state. I do not think Infowar was described properly to him, however. Cyberterrorism and the use of electromagnetic pulses to destroy electronic devices were never brought up, leaving Kennedy under the assumption that the category is only referring to information transmitted through various forms of media. Prof. Luong, who teaches a course focusing on global security at Brown, lectured on Cyberterrorism and EMPs last week. Luong was particularly concerned about assaults on the computers that control electrical grids or if attacks were used to delay emergency response in conjunction with a conventional strike. Kennedy also viewed networks as international businesses, discounting what he called “do-gooders” as a small percentage of transnational networks. That’s fair, he has written a book on “do-gooders” and the lack of good they actually do titled The Dark Side of Virtue, but I am not sure that businesses aren’t destroyed by information. At the very least, we should say that many businesses are forced to adapt or change due to negative information about their practices being conveyed to the public. Just think of how much money McDonald’s has poured into creating media arguing that its products are healthy or how much the menu has changed since it became fashionable for experts to ridicule their food as fattening or harmful.

Posted by Joshua Rosenthal on October 16, 2006 05:47 PM | Permalink

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